"Allen, Roger MacBride - Chronicles of Solace 3 - Shores of Tomorrow" - читать интересную книгу автора (Allen Roger Macbride)

. . . her first three books were discoveredЧand appropriatedЧby Dr. DeSilvo. He plagiarized her works, then did what he could to destroy all surviving references to the original. He erased the texts of her first three books from the Grand Library and claimed her ideas as his own.

Dr. DeSilvo then took these appropriated ideas and used them as the basis for a new terraforming project on the planet Solace.

. . . he applied BaskawТs techniques and completely ignored the warning in BaskawТs third book, which used a further expansion of her own mathematics to prove that the techniques DeSilvo was using would inevitably result in an unstable ecology, doomed to collapse.



And the collapse is happening right about now, back on Solace. If only that were the worst of it. Koffield read on, skimming quickly.



Dr. DeSilvo in effect suddenly had power over an entire world, indeed an entire star system. He had at his disposal a vast array of equipmentЧspacecraft, earthmoving equipment, massive power generators, and so on . . . he quickly established a clear pattern of УborrowingФ those resources for other purposes. . . .

The resources of the terraforming project were used to pay for various medical and life-extension services for Dr. DeSilvo, to finance the DeSilvo archive in the Grand Library. . . . Dr. DeSilvo out and out stole a large number of spacecraft, artificial intelligence systems, and other major pieces of equipment.

. . . When he tapped in to the mother lode of suppressed inventionsЧthe Dark Museum, he could not resist the chance to go further, much further. . . .

But simple informationЧdata, schematics, plans, and so onЧwas not enough for the plan that was gradually forming in his mind. He would need workshops and facilities of all sorts . . .

He had to build the machines he would need to build the machines to build the machine to build the machines he wanted.

. . . In all of this, he had to work through robots, teleoperators, artificial intelligence systems, and so on. He did it all without any witting human assistantsЧthough no doubt many unwitting ones.

. . . He wanted glory. He wanted to shower technological wonders down on a grateful and astonished humanity and bask in their appreciation. But how?

. . . Once Solace was completed, he would set himself up as a wizard of invention and dole out inventions and discoveries claiming the credit for himself. He arranged things so that, if things had gone as planned, his УworkshopФ would have opened for business decades after he should have died, given any sort of normal human life span.

The likely reason for that was to put several extra decades at least between himself and the УdiversionsФ of material. He of course planned to use cryogenic and/or temporal confinement to wait out the necessary period of time.



Koffield was about to skip down a bit farther, but a line or two caught his eye, and he scrolled back up.



. . . Given what is known of Dr. DeSilvoТs psychology, it is quite possible he was going to open that workshop and present himself to the outside universe as his own sonЧDeSilvo Junior.



Thatwas an interesting theory. Koffield could believe it. It fit in with DeSilvoТs endless rejuvenation treatments and transplants, his quest for eternal youth. But that quest was tied up with another, more morbid tendency. Did Ashdin discuss that? He skimmed ahead. Yes. There it was.



It would also fit in well with an odd psychological needЧDr. DeSilvoТs impulseЧperhaps even compulsionЧto mimic death. Dr. DeSilvo built himself a very fine tomb on Greenhouse and arranged his own simulated death over a century ago. He spent much of the intervening time in temporal confinement. He also used cryogenics or temporal confinement to wait out other periods of time. And, he did, in fact, literally die, several times, each time being placed in powerful temporal confinements or cryostorage systems while his medical staff spent weeks or months planning how best to revive him. On some level, Dr. DeSilvo enjoyed being dead. УReturningФ to life as his own son or grandson might well fulfill that peculiar need . . .

. . . Dr. DeSilvo first selected the location he wanted for his cacheЧa base on the planet Glister. His projections, using BaskawТs methods, were that Glister would be a dead world by the point in time he had chosen. He would then be able to scavenge the abandoned wreckage of the world in order to build the facility he needed.